Life Has Returned to Normal

[Tattered Heart]

The urgency to begin looking at leaving seems to have diminished extensively. We are now 10 days past my H's last blow up. Validation, SET, and boundaries are all helping him feel heard and accepted again. I am no longer feeling worn down, without hope, and unable to focus. I am able to use all the communication techniques effectively again.

Something happens to my H every July/August. I'm not sure what it is, but he seems to hit some sort of mental break at the same time every year. I reach a point where I am just done, and then he goes back to normal until the next year. He will still have minor issues off and on, and there seems to be another smaller break around January, but it's not as bad as the July/August dysregulations. Last year his summertime focus of dysregulation was work related. The previous year it was on conspiracy theories. And 4 years ago, the summer blow up was again focused on me, which is when I discovered BPD.

I know that he will have issues again and I know that things will probably get bad again, but it's important to me that I am able to continue focusing on bettering things, even if I know that leaving may be something that I have to do at a future date. I cannot live in a state of constantly focusing on the negative because that causes me to constantly respond to him negatively, and he in turn responds to the negativity. When I focus only on the negative I begin to feel like a victim. I feel trapped, but the reality is, that I live a mostly normal life with lots of social activities, a strong support system, faith that sustains me through most everything, financial stability, activities for self-actualization, personal fulfillment, and enjoyment. The un-normal is that my H has a mental illness that at times causes quite a bit of stress but is mostly manageable.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say right now. I guess I no longer feel the threat that I felt a few weeks ago. A couple years ago I redefined normal in my relationship. I knew that I could never expect my relationship to be normal by comparison to others, but I determined to decide what I would accept as healthy and normal for us. The 2 basic things are: 1) My H is not blowing up on a weekly basis 2) I look forward to going home at the end of the day. We are back to our version of normal.

[Cat Familiar]

Things have settled down and your enhanced communication skills are keeping the peace and you feel recharged again.   

You're noticing repeating cycles of dysregulation in the summer months and then he returns to baseline, with a bit of a blip happening in the winter. You are starting to plan for this on a regular basis.

It's occurred to you that focusing on the positive helps you improve things, while focusing on the negative wears you down and he responds accordingly. You have a strong support network, your faith and social activities keep you centered.

While you realize that your husband has a mental illness, you now know that what you've learned has helped to keep things manageable and at this point, you feel like things are thankfully back to normal.

Knowing what you now realize about the cycling nature of his disorder, how can you plan for what might occur in January or next summer?

 
Cat

[Enabler]

Hey tattered heart, have you diarised any of this? Try adding overlays of things like temperature, holidays, work stress, seeing FOO, note your own activities (is there anything you do in those months you don’t do in the rest of the year), is there any childhood trauma that occurred in the hot summer months... .you get the gig. I know there are plenty of board members who prep for events they know have emotional fallout.

I see dysrrgatiom as water in a pint glass, additive stressors (water) gets them closer to the rim which is the point they overflow and act out. Did you know there’s a statistically higher probability of spontaneous violent crime in the southern states... .the reason is the heat apparently. It’s just that little bit extra stress that pushes someone over the rim of their pint glass!

Enabler

[Tattered Heart]

Cat,

I think the biggest thing for me during those times of year when he dysregulates the most is to just be aware... .ahead of time. I forget. I don't mark them out so when it hits and doesn't go away like it usually does, I get very worn down very quickly. For instance this year, I had not been on the site much due to busyness at work and had not been paying close attention to communicating well. I started JADEing and invalidating out of old habits. And that just added to the arguments. By the time I had realized how badly I was JADEing, he had already built up some resentment and ammunition against me, I was feeling bitter and abused, and it just kept snowballing from there.

Enabler, I have racked my mind trying to figure out what triggers these summertime events. The only thing I can think of is the heat as an exasperating addition. I live southern Missouri and the heat is unbearable here. When family from Phoenix, AZ visits, they are disturbed by our heat. It's absolutely miserable. In relation to how I relate to my H during this time, he wants to be active and I don't want to do anything. I want to stay in the air conditioner, take naps, and just relax during the heat of the day. I don't want to be touched. I get grouchy, which could easily trigger rejection in him.

It could be a trauma from his childhood that gets triggered and he doesn't know it. The cause could be something completely chemical in his brain. I start acting weird in May. I get flighty, irresponsible, have this urge to just take off and leave everything behind every single May. Sometimes I uproot myself and make poor decisions during this time of year. No idea why. No clue what causes it, but it's happened every since I was a teenager. He may very well have the same type of thing going on.

[Cat Familiar]

Knowing your own cyclical tendencies certainly gives you compassion for his.    Do you have keep a calendar of any kind where you could mark it with a code that only you'd understand?

[Enabler]

In relation to how I relate to my H during this time, he wants to be active and I don't want to do anything. I want to stay in the air conditioner, take naps, and just relax during the heat of the day. I don't want to be touched. I get grouchy, which could easily trigger rejection in him.

It could be a trauma from his childhood that gets triggered and he doesn't know it. The cause could be something completely chemical in his brain. I start acting weird in May. I get flighty, irresponsible, have this urge to just take off and leave everything behind every single May. Sometimes I uproot myself and make poor decisions during this time of year.

Just a hunch but I can see a couple of things here and clearly you do as well. I have noticed that there is often an event, or a thing and then there is a period of delay (maybe where my wife ruminates a lot about the event). So, something might happen and then she spends weeks/months stewing about it, I know something is up but she keeps it underwraps. Then BOOM, she blows the world up. So, in May you become distant and he gets abandonment fears because he thinks you're going to run off, he stews about this for months and adds to the weirdness in the relationship creating more distance. The heat starts to ramp up and he's already got an almost full emotional pint glass, the heat gets to him but more importantly the heat gets to you and you push him away. He personalises the push by you, fears abandonment even more and he dysregulates time after time after time. Heat goes away, everyone chills out and things return to normal.

Does that sound plausible?

Enabler

[Tattered Heart]

I have a calendar at work and on my phone that I can track things on.

I'm not sure my mood in May is a big factor. It was just an observation in myself about cyclic moods. But the heat, my dislike and grumpiness when hot, could be a big factor.

[WitzEndWife]

I think you're doing good work in recognizing patterns, TH. And it looks like you're thinking more deeply into triggers. Did something happen in your H's past in the summer that perhaps he's dysregulating over? Heat could certainly be a factor (I feel you, we live in MO also -ugh), but I'm wondering if it's deeper than that. My H gets triggered by seeing things from his childhood. He'll start crying in the grocery store if he sees something he used to love as a child, or something made in his home country of Canada. If you can't regulate the triggers, at least you can prep for them and try to get ahead of them for yourself.

[WileyCoyote]

Hi TH,
Just wanted to share something you might find interesting and helpful depending on what you know about your H's past.

  While sharing behavior cycles of my udBPDW with my T he asked me if there was a time of year every year when things were worst.

He said that "anniversary" dysregulation is a major sign of sexual abuse as a child.  It happens like clockwork at a time when the trauma occurred.  The person with emotional regulation problems isn't even consciously aware of the anniversary nature of the outburst.

Just something to think about.  As always, this doesn't excuse the behavior.

[Enabler]

I once heard a story and I do t know whether it’s an old wives tale or not but here goes... .there was a little girl and she would have intermittent episodes, fits let’s call them. They were regular, mainly happened at home but with no decernible pattern other than they never occurred after 8pm. Anyway, after a lot of analysis by specialists they could determine what was wrong only that she had these fits and they believed there was some form of trigger. By stroke of luck and deduction they noticed that the pedestrian crossing out the front was beeping when the fits began... .it turns out that it doesn’t beep after 8pm at night and the girl had been run over on the pedestrian crossing some years back, the sound of the crossing triggered an emotional and physical reaction. The family moved house away from any pedestrian crossings and she didn’t have any episodes again.

Odd example I know but weird things trigger emotional flashbacks of trauma, who knows what it might be, the girl didn’t.

[AskingWhy]

TH, I am so glad to hear this!   

I am sort of entering this time with my  uBPD/uNPD H for now, too.

I am also using SET and other communication techniques to get by.

Can you pin down some of the triggers for you H?  I know my H will dysregulate when he is under stress or when he is doling out money to his adult children.  (They all seem to be in the spectrum of BPD or NPD themselves.  H's X W is most likely NPD.)

Is there something in his childhood?  I know weather can impact human behavior, and even crime goes up in hot weather. 

Take care.  I am happy to hear other areas of your life are supportive and well rounded.   

[Tattered Heart]

He has 3 big triggers that I've really noticed:

1. Work (if he has too much or not enough to do, how he gets along with his boss, how many phone calls he gets about work, etc.)
2. Change (He really struggles with change in routine. Transition periods are difficult, such as when we are preparing to go somewhere in public). THis is usually what triggers him towards me--I'm causing a schedule change or trying to get him to leave the house one time, etc.
3. Being out of weed. And he doesn't know how to make it last. He gets it every Friday or Saturday, but he runs out around Wednesday or Thursday.